He seemed to ignore utterly anything like religion, or even
the very notion of God, in his chains of argument. Nature was spoken of as
the wilier and producer of all the marvels which he describes; and every
word in the book, to my astonishment, might have been written just as
easily by an Atheist as by a dignitary of the Church of England.
I could not help, that evening, hinting this defect, as delicately as I
could, to my good host, and was somewhat surprised to find that he did not
consider it a defect at all.
"I am in no wise anxious to weaken the antithesis between natural and
revealed religion. Science may help the former, but it has absolutely
nothing to do with the latter. She stands on her own ground, has her own
laws, and is her own reward. Christianity is a matter of faith and of the
teaching of the Church. It must not go out of its way for science, and
science must not go out of her way for it; and where they seem to differ,
it is our duty to believe that they are reconcilable by fuller knowledge,
but not to clip truth in order to make it match with doctrine.
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